A new way to design and build electronics?

The democratization of electronics; why open source, Kickstarter, and Shenzhen will change the world of electronics.

If you work in or follow the world of electronics, you see continuous innovation but may easily miss the wider implications of technological change. Some trends run down well-understood and time-honored paths; think touch and MEMS, for example. These two technologies have been slow burns: we all saw the first instantiations, and they were rudimentary, but the potential was clearly there. We all expected the silicon and software to incrementally improve, and it has--just look at the iPhone as the iconic example of touch and MEMS in action. Another example to watch is vision and gesture recognition. The Kinect for XBOX opened up a lot of thinking and opportunities (watch out for LEAP), and I predict many more applications are to come. Sometimes, though, the innovation is not just in the technology--it's also in the underlying industry business model. We're starting to see a major shift in how new products can come to market.

Alex Murawski founder of Makeblock showing how tough they are. (Photo: David Blaza)Click on image to enlarge.

So, what trends are converging that will change electronic design and manufacturing? As evidenced throughout the history of business, companies need certain basic elements to succeed: money, innovation or technology, manufacturing, distribution and some may also add the entrepreneurial spirit. In China last week, I saw all of these elements coming together in such a compelling way I need to share what I saw with you. Let's start with money. Say you have an idea for a product and you need to raise cash to pay for research, prototyping, development and your living expenses. How do you do it?

In the past you could bootstrap it yourself, go to a bank to get a loan or find investors who took a big chunk of the business (if you were lucky enough to get them to fund you). This method of launching a company is time consuming, can lead to loss of control and slows innovation. There are new ways to fund product development that are game changers.

Bilibot team at Seeed. (Photo: David Blaza)Click on image to enlarge.

Perhaps the most famous example right now is Kickstarter, which has pioneered crowd funding. Kickstarter enabled electronics inventors such as Pebble and Twine to raise money ($10 million in Pebble's case) to fund the development of their ideas into products. It's a stunningly simple model; people like me pre-pay for the product (and yes I have paid for both of these and a LEAP). This funding gives the entrepreneurs the working capital they need to get the product to market. Kickstarter isn't the only way to fund and get your product to market. You can go to an incubator, such as HAXLR8R, who will help you not only find the money but build and distribute your product.

Eric Pan founder of Seeed with RF Explorer. (Photo: David Blaza)Click on image to enlarge.

I met Cyril Ebersweiler, one of the founders of HAXLR8R, in Shenzhen last week at Seeed Studio, which I wanted to see not just because they have a great website but it's on the forefront of the DIY/Maker revolution. Cyril is incubating the Bilibot project and Makeblock as just two but very real examples of this new world of design (see photos).

The availability of inexpensive electronics development kits like Arduino, Beagleboard and the red-hot Raspberry Pi are stimulating a lot of designs and new products that were previously only achievable by large companies with deep engineering resources and an established supply chain. I describe this as the democratization of design because anyone with an idea and entrepreneurial flair can go to market fueled by easy access to funding, open-source hardware and software (thank you Android) and incubators like the ones I describe above. So what's stopping you?

In my next blog, I'll look at the insane Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, the naked supply chain!

David Blaza is vice president of UBM Electronics, which publishes EE Times.

There is a thin line between scam and investing.
Anyone old enough to remember the old-days internet and pre-internet email, usenet and such will remember that a good 99% of the people involved were genuine and an incredibly small minority would do anything criminal or malicious.
Now 30% or more of the internet traffic is spam and other criminal content.
Of course there will be genuine crowd funding exercises, but there will be scams too and, just like phishing sites, it will be hard to tell the difference.
There does not seem to be much control to prevent someone taking the invested money and just announcing 6 months later that all the money was spent and the idea didn't work.
Unfortunately it does not take many bad apples to wreck an otherwise good idea.

I think it is both. crowd sourcing investment is a I2I type arraingment cutting out the middle man.
Whether middle man add value over time is in great debate. but you are on your own and if one did not bet the farm on one product the return can be very good.

Another facet to this is the sheer ability for a person or small group of people to create and develop a product using insanely powerful and functional (yet inexpensive) tools from software to 3D printing, with easy access to contract manufacturing. One can almost launch a product from their credit card.

It's another form of crowd sourcing. Instead of sourcing information, knowledge and talent, Kickstarter helps young entrepreneur source fund to start a new business. What interest me the most is how these "investors" know the product is not a scam. In addition, what if the product is not delivered.

You have to remember, these are not actually purchases. Technically, they are "investments", with all the risks associated with investing. This risk is traditionally borne by VC's, which in this case is you on a much more modest economic scale. If your intent is not an open ended investment, then kickstarter is not for you. Personally, I find kickstarter much more satisfying than Vegas, and your odds are better as well.

I doubt how this works, with so many fraudulent activities taking over on internet, how can a customer believes in a non-existent product and purchase it. Strange. What happens to the people who have pre-purchased and that number is not sufficient to really make the product.

I heard of Kickstarter and contributed to a CD in the works there by Bay Area singer/songwriter Mark Lemaire (plug), but not their peers in China. Very interesting.
It may take a big splash with a system success born out of these Web 2.0 sites to get this new design channel on to the radar screen of the rest of the industry...or a few more of your blogs!

I wonder whether this is just a fad for people desperately trying to be a cool internet person or whether the idea really has legs.
It looks like a great way to fund some types of project, but looks dubious for others. I wonder how you can tell?